


the revolution, six years on

by storm_petrel



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Gen, Post-Canon, What Happened in Budapest, dumb spies in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 13:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5588476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storm_petrel/pseuds/storm_petrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembers the taste of red wine, of salt water and diesel in his mouth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the revolution, six years on

**Author's Note:**

> Aww, I wrote this a million years ago for my sister. To the internet with you, tiny weird email fic!

It’s midnight, a safehouse in Budapest. They’re near the embassies—Napoleon knows because he’s fast-twitched the blinds, once, twice, three times in the last hour, enough to track north, south and east. Not West, although they’ll have to make their way back eventually.

 

Illya is on the bed, curled in tight around his core, dosed on all the industrial-strength homebrew and black market war-era morphine Napoleon could get with a fistful of forints and a smile. Sleeping, but not quietly. Napoleon sometimes wishes he’d never picked up all that Russian, because there are things that a man can say, asleep and in pain in the last watches of the night, that could make another man idly wonder whether blowing the whole world into nuclear darkness isn’t a fine plan after all.

 

Napoleon blinks. Rubs his hand over his mouth, up through his hair. Stills his fingers deliberately, and smooths it back into place. His suit’s a wreck. He’s going to have to replace it, and Illya’s, before another day is out. He’s going to have to be quick, and sharp about this. The ÁVH, the mindless brutes, might be done, yes, but Nagy’s been dead for years now, and the revolution’s ground down, ten thousand Hungarians down under the Soviet tanks. They need to get out of Budapest, out of Hungary.

 

He thinks, a fast exhausted wisp of thought, about Portugal. The warm salt spray on the white beaches in Algarve. Fresh sardines and cold white wine. For an instant, Illya’s in the memory. The sunlight would look beautiful in his hair.

 

Napoleon realizes abruptly that the blinds are open. He shuts them—not quickly, too suspicious—and walks three step across the room, to the sprung-mattress bed. One Russian giant curled across one half, small as he can make himself. Napoleon drops down next to him, gentle as he can, but he’s at the bottom of a deep well of exhaustion now. Tucks the Walther under the pillow—and such a fucking foolish gun to carry, with _Made in West Germany_ stamped right across the fucking barrel, only a criminal or an American would be carrying one through this part of Europe. Better to have an ugly Mauser like Illya’s, a hundred thousand of the fucking things got picked off dead Germans all those years back.

 

Years and years, now. Doesn’t feel so long. Napoleon tucks himself in tight behind Illya, knees to knees, chin tucked over Illya’s shoulder, one hand curled across IIlya’s sternum, one hand under the pillow on the Walther’s grip. IIlya mumbles something, says, “Polya,” and then nothing. Deep slow breathing and asleep, properly, finally. Hard body warm under Napoleon’s, the realest thing in the world.

 

Napoleon inhales hard, just for a second, wet and raspy. Breathes out. Portugal’s still in his mind’s eye, warm and beguiling. The salt memory brings him to Rome, just for a moment, although that was eighteen long months back. A lifetime, maybe.

 

Thinks about the truck, the taste of red wine and salt water and diesel in his mouth. Thinks of that long moment where he could have left this savagely good man down there, under all that cold, dark water.

 

Napoleon breathes in, out again. Then he lets the warm Portuguese sun creep into that memory, slowly, until it’s gone. He’ll bring Illya there, soon. Feed him cheap bottled lager and fresh clams off the boats and tackle him disgruntled and Russian and growling into the sand. Kiss him until the burns and the bruises are gone, and Budapest is one more dark memory that can just burn away, in the sunlight.


End file.
